Jungle Cocoon

I am very fortunate to have gorgeous nieces, young cousins, and lots of friends with kids, as it means I have an excuse to knit up lots of baby, toddler, and child patterns.

My favourite age to knit for?

Newborn.

Everything is so tiny, and absolutely adorable. They are quick knits, and when you're finished you sit there in amazement and wonder how on earth you were ever that small. The newborn knit I am most pleased with is the little 'Hello, Sailor!' dress I made last November. It is currently sat in my gift basket (which I will blog about soon!) waiting for a loving home. I can't wait to see it being worn!

I tend to stalk the Ravelry Pattern library for new baby patterns, as they are so quick, cute and use up those odd bits of yarn in my stash. Lately, I kept coming across Cacoons, which are a little sleeping bag! There are some gorgeous patterns on Ravelry, such as the Mermaid Cocoon (I need to get better at crochet so I can make this!). I wanted to see how the construction worked, as I had a couple of ideas for my own design, so I thought I would pick a simple pattern so I could see how it was constructed etc. I chose Old Pink Cocoon by Barbara Ajroldi, after a look through my stash I could only find pastel colours, and to be honest I'm bored of using traditional colours for these kind of projects, I want to keep my knitting looking modern and funky. So, with that in mind, I chose four different yarns. Premier Value Double Knit in Meadow, King Cole Big Value DK in Kingfisher, V&A Products Ltd Craft Cotton in Ecru and an unknown brown DK with golden yellow speckles.

I was originally using these colours as a part of the Temperature Scarf I was attempting, but I ended up missing so many days in a row I decided to stop knitting it. Rather than frog it though, I used it as a swatch for the cocoon, to give me an idea on how I should stripe the yarns.

The top of the sack is lace, unfortunately the King Cole Big Value DK doesn't have great stitch definition so the lace is difficult to see, even when you have it squished up against your face. The lace was quickly followed by a few centimeters of stocking stitch, and now I am onto the eyelet section of the sack, which means I am getting close to finishing! 

The eyelet section is done by k2tog all across the row, then on the WS,  you P1, pick up the yarn in between the next stitch, purl it, and repeat the process. This particular WS seems to take the longest, but I like the end result. 

For the final section of the sack, I'll knit it in the brown speckled yarn like I did for my swatch. I'm pretty pleased on how well the yarns go together, I think I am slowly getting better at choosing colour combinations without the need of help from the internet or my arty Mum!

So, I hope to have this casted off & sewn up by the weekend. I do have a particular person I am going to save it for, so until this certain person gets preggers, this will be going into the gift basket!

Enjoy your evening folks!